Safety Alert: If you believe your computer activities are being monitored, please access this site from a safer computer. To immediately exit this site, click the escape button. If you are in immediate danger, contact 911, a local crisis line, or the U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 and TTY 1-800-787-3224.

Safety Alert: If you believe your computer activities are being monitored, please access this site from a safer computer. To immediately exit this site, click the escape button. If you are in immediate danger, contact 911, a local crisis line, or the U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 and TTY 1-800-787-3224.

This will be a presentation of a personal experience of domestic and sexual violence and how poverty, language, culture, religious beliefs, and immigration all intertwined to complicate the few potential intervention points that existed.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to do the following:

Understand the connection between bias and oppression and its impact on a survivor’s ability to access services.

Understand how violence and oppression can result in trauma.

Identify the signs of trauma and what they mean.

Develop strategies for becoming more culturally responsive and trauma informed.

Presenter:

Olga Trujillo, J.D., Director of Education and Advocacy at Casa de Esperanza: National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities

Olga Trujillo, JD, Director of Education and Advocacy at Casa de Esperanza/National Latin@ Network, is an attorney, speaker, author and survivor. Her experience over the past 27 years has been as a private attorney, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, and a consultant to many local, state and national organizations. Olga is an internationally sought speaker and author and is featured in the video “A Survivor’s Story,” a documentary and training video based on her personal experience of violence. Olga has authored a number of articles and publications. Her memoir for New Harbinger Publications, titled “The Sum of My Parts,” was released in October 2011. She also co-authored a Handbook for Attorneys “Representing Domestic Violence Survivors Who Are Also Experiencing Trauma and Mental Health Challenges,” which was released in January 2012.

Promundo is an applied research non-governmental organization whose mission it is to engage men and boys for gender justice. This webinar will present Promundo's latest research from the Man Box Study on men's attitudes, perceptions, and practices as they relate to gender equality. Promundo will also present how such research is informing innovative gender-transformative programming in the United States on engaging men and boys.

Through this webinar, participants will:

Gain new understanding of how harmful ideas about masculinity and manhood link statistically with negative health and well-being outcomes in the US and Mexico.

Have increased knowledge about the process of adapting, designing, implementing, and evaluating an evidence-based discussion group curriculum for high school students in the US, focusing on challenging harmful ideas about masculinity, preventing various forms of violence, and promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Better understand how insights from national surveys and past program evaluations can be used to inform, adapt, and improve programming for high schoolers.

Presenters:

Jane Kato-Wallace, Director of Programs, Promundo-US

Jane Kato-Wallace, MPH is Promundo's Director of Programs. She is a gender and masculinities expert who has led the adaptation of Promundo's gender-transformative methodologies on gender equality, preventing violence, and youth engagement in over 20 countries around the world. In the U.S., she is the co-investigator of two CDC-funded Manhood 2.0 studies aiming to evaluate community-based approaches to promote improved health and prevent violence with young men and boys of color. She has written extensively on how gender norms influence young people's health vulnerabilities Jane’s previous work experience includes conducting public health research with Columbia University and EngenderHealth on the U.S.-based Gender Matters program, and supporting a USAID health policy project in the Latin American region. Jane has a Master’s degree in Public Health from Columbia University.

Brian Heilman, Senior Research Officer, Promundo-US

Brian Heilman's work focuses on eliminating harmful masculine norms, preventing all forms of gender-based violence, and achieving broader gender equality and social justice in the United States and around the world. Brian is a co-author of the 2017 State of the World's Fathers and 2016 State of America's Fathers reports, the lead author of The Man Box study on harmful effects of rigid masculine norms in the U.S., U.K., and Mexico, and a co-author of multiple reports using International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) data. Brian has extensive program and research experience in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, and is deeply engaged as a sexual violence prevention educator in collaboration with the Sexual Violence Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This webinar will explain the concept of court culture and how do courts have their own culture? What are characteristics of court culture? How can those qualities help or hinder litigants on domestic violence cases, both petitioners and respondents?

By the end of this session, participants should be able to do the following:

Define the concept of court culture and how it impacts the experience of court staff.

Explain the intersectionality between court culture and access to justice for litigants.

Distinguish the specific court culture within participant’s own jurisdiction.

Liberty Aldrich, JD, Director of Gender Based Violence Programs at the Center for Court Innovation, provides technical assistance on the development and implementation of domestic violence and sexual assault criminal justice programs nationally and internationally. Ms. Aldrich works with government and non-government agencies to implement a coordinated community response to gender-based and family violence. She has also been retained as a consultant to family courts and government agencies on child protective and custody programs.

Rosa C. Figarola, Judge, 11th Judicial Circuit, Miami-Dade County

Rosa Figarola is a circuit court judge assigned to the Unified Family Division in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Prior to her present assignment, she served in the Dependency, Family, Domestic Violence and Criminal Divisions in Miami-Dade County. She is a former Assistant Public Defender, serving in the Office of the Public Defender from 1982 until her appointment to the County Court Bench in 2001. She was appointed to the Circuit Court Bench in 2011. Judge Figarola is a 1982 graduate from the University Of Miami School Of Law. She has been an adjunct professor in Family Law and Trial Advocacy at St. Thomas School of Law in Miami and serves in community service boards addressing domestic violence. Judge Figarola participates in several programs and boards designed to help educate judges and stakeholders regarding issues surrounding the adjudication of domestic violence cases. She has also participated in symposiums addressing gender bias such as the Caribbean Dialogue on Rule of Law and Gender-Based Violence held in Miami in 2012 and conducted a presentation on trauma informed courts in San Juan, Puerto Rico in March 2016.

For a justice system to be truly just, it must be accessible to all individuals. However, survivor litigants may face challenges when courts are not responsive to their cultural identity. For survivors of gender based violence, these challenges present additional barriers towards accessing justice and obtaining fair outcomes. Recognizing and respecting individual cultural differences are important to sensitive and effective work with survivors. In addition, differences in concepts of suffering and healing can influence how individuals may experience the effects of gender based victimization and interaction with courts.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to do the following:

Nida Abbasi, JD, Coordinator of the Domestic Violence Programs at the Center for Court Innovation, delivers expert assistance to courts and communities seeking to enhance their approach to domestic and sexual violence. At the Center, she has developed numerous products and presentations focused on the issues surrounding violence against women, including supervised visitation, culturally responsive practices, offender deterrence strategies, and best practices for domestic violence courts.

Jose Juan Lara Jr., MS, has been involved in the movement against gender violence since 1999 in Texas and has facilitated workshops at national, state, and local conferences on crisis intervention, systems advocacy for victims of family and sexual violence, and LGBTQ victims of interpersonal violence. Prior to coming to the National Latin@ Network, Jose Juan was the Senior Victim Services Program Specialist for Texas Advocacy Project in Austin; Legal Advocate Program Coordinator for Friendship of Women, Inc. in Brownsville; Case Manager Supervisor/Volunteer Coordinator for Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of Cameron and Willacy Counties; and Director of Legal Services for the Family Crisis Center, Inc. in Harlingen. Jose Juan serves on the Board of Directors for the Texas Victim Services Association and allgo, a statewide queer people of color organization (originally, Austin Latina/o Lesbian and Gay Organization) and a consultant for Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center. Jose Juan holds an MA in Sociology and an MS in Public Safety with specialization in Criminal Justice.

If you or a loved one is experiencing domestic violence and wants to access resources and support, please click here to be routed to the Casa de Esperanza website where you can access this information.

The National Latin@ Network for Healthy Families and Communities is a project of Casa de Esperanza that builds bridges and connections among research, practice and policy to advance effective responses to eliminate domestic violence and to promote healthy relationships within Latin@ families and communities. LEARN MORE